At Softball Game, Joyner Doesn’t Play Hardball

Slo-pitch softball, when played by major league millionaires for charity in early February, is an altogether different breed of game.

For one thing, there’s no kegger stashed inside either dugout--only a silo-sized inflatable Pepsi can stationed on the center field warning track.

For another thing, the 11th Pepsi All-Star Softball Game is steeped in its own sacrosanct ritual, every step being dutifully re-enacted Saturday afternoon at Palm Springs Angels Stadium.

As is the way with these things:

--Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr., Bobby Bonilla, Tony Gwynn, Ryne Sandberg, Kirby Puckett, Paul Molitor and Cecil Fielder all played . . . and the MVP award went to Craig Biggio.

--One superstar, in this case Barry Bonds, refused to show because organizers couldn’t provide a charter jet to fly him in for the game that morning and back out immediately after the final out.

--One Gold Glove outfielder, in this case Griffey, lost the game by losing a routine pop fly in the sun.

--Some of the best hitters in baseball, armed with aluminum bats and aiming at free-falling overstuffed orbs, were reduced to clinking, plinking hacks who’d get run out of your brother-in-law Fred’s Monday night league. The final score was National League 3, American League 2, and the hitting was so abysmal that the pre-game home run contest got scratched after two rounds of batting practice produced one total home run. (Trivia answer: Frank Thomas hit it.)

Same old same old. Wally Joyner knows the drill. “This is my fifth one,” he said after coaching first base for four innings and lining out to the rover in his only at-bat. “All of them have been fun. Usually about this time of year, I’m looking for something like this--a weekend deal where I can go somewhere with my family and relax. This is perfect.”

Almost.

For Joyner, one new wrinkle was introduced when he was introduced at the same ballpark he first lit up with sheer energy and never-ending line drives into the outfield gaps, now nearly seven springs ago.

He was booed.

Not raucous booing, not tumultuous booing, but undeniably detectable booing, an octave or two above the applause that stamped the crowd reaction as mixed as mixed could be.

“You have to expect that,” Joyner said.

Joyner is part of the enemy now. An Angel no more, he is a Kansas City Royal for the season ahead and perhaps many more, a turncoat who traded in his red cleats for blue hightops and went so far Saturday as to tamper with the labeling. Joyner’s familiar No. 21 was nowhere to be found at Angels Stadium. Instead, Joyner wore the transpose of his old jersey ID--12--and advertised it on his back in a crimson that glared.

“I feel like a new man,” Joyner said, echoing sentiments strikingly similar to new Chicago White Sox pitcher Kirk McCaskill and new Toronto Blue Jay outfielder Dave Winfield. “It wasn’t my intent to start a domino effect, to say ‘I’ll do this and all these other players will follow.’ I don’t think I’m smart enough to do anything like that.

“I just made a decision based on the fact that I wasn’t as happy with the Angels as I had been in the past. I wasn’t happy where I was playing, and I think it was affecting me personally.”

The unhappiness came from a highly placed source, the ownership of the Angels, Gene and Jackie Autry. Six years of very visible contract haggling had badly distorted the Autrys’ vision--to the point where they looked at the franchise’s most popular and valuable position player and saw only a money-grubbing, self-serving soloist who cruised too often when the course demanded up-shifting.

Joyner claims he never heard these kind of discouraging words inside the Angel clubhouse, where his daily habits were scrutinized by players and various managers since 1986.

“Everybody I’ve talked to--and in my opinion, everybody’s been honest to me--has had good things to say,” Joyner said. “Gene Mauch when he was there, Doug Rader when he was there, even Buck Rodgers for the last month of the season--all of the men I played for told me they liked the way I played.”

And his teammates?

“I never heard any complaints,” he said. “Now, I know you can’t make everybody happy all the time, and maybe I wasn’t as personable (in recent seasons) as I used to be. But I have children now. I spend more time with my family now because I’m working more and more at being a better father.”

Joyner will concede one critique: He did not hustle 100% of his time on the field in an Angel uniform.

“I realize I don’t run out every fly ball,” he said, alluding to one episode in the Metrodome last August when a pop fly dropped and a barely jogging Joyner was nearly nailed at first base.

“It was embarrassing when they didn’t catch the ball and almost threw me out. But the majority of the time, I played hard. As far as my being a malingerer, no, I don’t consider myself one.”

If the Autrys wanted to see dogging, Joyner says he could have shown them dogging. He uses this as evidence that he left the Angels, essentially, to bury the hatchet--”I did not want to continue the feud,” he said. “If I really wanted to get back at them, I’d have taken the money the Angels offered in the end ($16 million for four years) and sat on it for four more years. You’d have done the one thing they didn’t want you to do.”

So instead of sitting on $16 million, Joyner will be playing for $4.2 million this season with Kansas City and playing for more--more millions, more seasons. Joyner signed a one-year contract to forge his escape from Anaheim, a gamble that drew criticism from the fiscal experts in the sportswriting profession, criticism Joyner doesn’t understand.

“I’ve done the same thing for the last six years,” he quipped. “It’s not like I’m doing anything different. The only thing different is that I signed this one-year deal as a free agent.”

So did Jack Morris--and look where that got him. Joyner has noticed. Unlike Morris, however, Joyner is hoping his next stop is just that, a stop, and not a pause.

“It is not my desire to become a free agent ever again,” he said. “You get one opportunity to pick the place where you want to play, and I’m happy with my selection.”

As for the place he’s leaving, Joyner would only say, “I’ve got a lot of friends on that team. I hope they do very well.” It was the right thing to say, the polite thing to say, the appropriate thing to say.

Saturday, after all, was a day for charity.